Using digital tools, researchers can collaborate more easily and access data more quickly. But what are some trade-offs? Collaboration has considerable overhead. Tools and services for conducting online meetings are not yet robust or easy to use. Similarly, data are not always easy to find or to interpret. Can you protect your rights, but still post your papers on a Web site or e-repository? You can. I recommend assessing a journal's copyright policy before submitting an article, modifying agreements where appropriate and using Creative Commons licenses whenever possible. The Creative Commons is a some-rights-reserved legal model. You can learn more about these methods through the UCLA Library.

Is preservation of data a problem? A massive problem, especially as the "data deluge" accelerates. Information scientists are partnering with other scholars to build up data preservation expertise in specific disciplines.

February 14, 2008

The Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) has recently announced the winners of the 2007 PSP Awards for Excellence. These awards are given in 30 categories for outstanding books, journals and digital products covering a
wide range of academic disciplines. The awards were presented during the PSP Annual Conference in Washington, DC.

February 13, 2008

The president of the The College of William and Mary, a public college in Virginia, has resigned this week amidst controversy. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports the story in this article. One piece of the controversy involves last year's removal of a cross from a public chapel so that non-Christians would feel welcome. Another issue is that the president allowed an annual art performance show - "The Sex Workers' Art Show" - to visit campus. The Sex Workers' Art Show, which will be performing at Harvard University this Saturday, is a spoken word performance show that is a collaboration of artists who have at one time worked as adult escorts, erotic writers, strippers or in some other capacity in the sex industry. As reported in the Weekly Dig:

The adult sex industry nets $12 billion—accruing more than professional
baseball, football and hockey combined. [tour founder and director Annie] Oakley mentioned this figure
during her introduction, after asking anyone who patronizes the adult
sex industry to clap. Presented with hesitant applause, Oakley allowed
it to be understated that most adult Americans (including most people
in the audience) have utilized services provided by adult actors,
erotic writers, adult models, escorts or professional dominants.

The show visits the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, MA on Friday, February 15th, and continues on to Rhode Island School of Design, Wesleyan, and the University of Michigan next week. Those who are interested and have missed the tour in the past (in 2006, for instance, when Semiotext(e) author Michelle Tea had been on the roster) should be sure to catch it this
time around. And get your tickets ahead of time: venues have been
selling out.

As Turkey looks ahead toward the day when they join the European Union once and
for all, one of the many policy questions on the national agenda is whether and
how to filter the Internet. There is sensitivity around content of various
sorts: criticism of the republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; gambling; and
obscenity top the list. The parliament passed a law earlier in 2007 that gives a
government authority a broad mandate to filter content of this sort from the
Internet. To date, I’m told, about 10 orders have been issued by this authority,
and an additional 40 orders by a court to filter content. The process is only a
few months old; much remains to be learned about how this law, known as “5651,”
will be implemented over time.

The Guardianreported this week on one of the world's most prolific authors, Philip M. Parker, who has apparently written more than 85000 books. 85000 books? How can anyone do that? According to The Guardian, Parker, an economist, has developed a machine to help him write books; it takes about 20 minutes per book. A few recent examples of his titles include:The 2007-2012 Outlook for Lemon-Flavored Water in JapanThe 2007 Import and Export Market for Candles and Tapers in the United KingdomWebster's English to Swahili Crossword Puzzlesand so on...According to a post on Beerkens' Blog: "I don’t know what kind of device this is, but I am sure I want one!" Back in 2000, Parker wrote an MIT Press book (not computer generated, we hope) called Physioeconomics. Description of the book: Parker shows how factors such as income, aggregate savings, investment,
technology, entrepreneurship, production, and outputs per worker are
influenced by the more fundamental principles of physics and physiology.Sounds like he has been busy at work applying some of those principles..

February 05, 2008

Almost every day one can read a political analysis which moves from an image of human nature to an argument for foreign policy. George Will is perfectly explicit (Newsweek, Aug 19, 2002):

The toxic idea at the core of all the most murderous ideologies of the modern age. That idea is that human nature is, if not a fiction, at least so watery and flimsy that it poses no serious impediment to evil political entities determined to treat people as malleable clay to be molded into creatures at once submissive and violent.

Here are two more, one very recent, the other a few months ago. In the November 16, 2007 New York Times Book Review, Johann Hari summarizes Walter Russell Mead’s perspective in his book God and Gold:

Mead ends with a call. . . . to place the idea of original sin at the center of politics. All men are fallen so politics needs [to be]. . . . conscious of their hideous flaws.From there in a few sentences, imperialism is justified.

In his column, David Brooks, links his views to his perception of human nature:

Human beings, in our current understanding, are jerry-built creatures, in which new, sophisticated faculties are piled on top of primitive earlier ones. …Furthermore, reason is not separate from emotion and the soul cannot be detached from the electrical and chemical pulses of the body. There isn't even a single seat of authority in the brain. The mind emerges (somehow) from a complex light show of neural firings without a center or executive. We are tools of mental processes we are not even aware of…. We have a grand narrative that explains behavior and gives shape to history. (“The Morality Line” NYT Apr 16.2007)

From there to the justification of various things like the politics of the Middle East is just a few short steps (detailed in many columns). The argument rests on this idea: we have an unconscious which we do not understand or control. Generally, this line of reasoning promotes the notion that those in power, parents or politicians, have a right to assume malevolent motives and therefore the right to intervene for the greater good. Few of us escape this modern habit, whether it is interpreting George Bush or our 3 year old child.

Brooks claims that his ideas are based on modern cognitive science - and to a degree they are, citing Steven Pinker (though Pinker tells me that he is no supporter of such implications). While Noam Chomsky has commented that “on the ordinary problems of life, science tells us very little” ( Chomsky nov 6- 06 La Jolla on Edge website), one can stilll ask whether it causes harm. More pointedly, one can ask: do those of us who would disagree with Brooks and come from a cognitive science background, have any alternative to offer?

Since Freud the concept of the modularity of mind has become an accepted part of modern culture. Not only Freud, but Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, Steve Pinker and others less well-known, like me, have argued that insight into mental processes demands a modular view of the mind. Brooks’ view seems to fall right into place in thisframework.

February 04, 2008

Sylvère Lotringer, founder of Semiotext(e) and professor of French Literature and Philosophy at Columbia University, is giving a lecture entitled Baudrillard's Homage to Foucault this Thursday (February 7th, at 7pm) at NYU's La Maison Française in New York City. La Maison Française, a renowned French cultural center, is just north of Washington Square. See the La Maison Français website for more information.